Clever Ways to Hide Your Ugly Furnace – A Pictorial Guide

One look and it’s clear, furnaces were not designed with beauty or aesthetics in mind. They are designed for one thing – creating warm air and blowing it throughout your home. To their credit, they do that quite well. But we hear many customers complain that they wish there was a way to hide their furnaces. They just don’t add anything to the decor when you finish a basement or laundry room and they stand there like silent sentinels bent on ruining your otherwise beautiful space. Well, never fear. There are some clever ways to camouflage that dutiful piece of home equipment. We scoured Pinterest to share some of the best with you here. Read on to find several surprising solutions for hiding your furnace.

Check the Clearance, Clarence

You may be concerned about how much room you should leave around your furnace for safety and access. It is, first and foremost, a machine made to create and supply hot air to your home. Fortunately, most furnaces don’t need a lot of extra space. Clearances for combustibility safety can be less than six inches. Remember, though that you must have adequate working space of roughly two feet around the furnace so it can be repaired or replaced when necessary. If the furnace room will have less than 100 square feet of free area, you will need to let air in. Grills or louvered doors are great options.

Curtain Call

You don’t have to spend a lot of money. For a fast fix, simply find curtains that complement your decor and hang them in front of or around your furnace. Voila! You just went from hideous to hidden for less than $20. For the fastest and cheapest way to hide a furnace, simply install a decorative curtain around it.

Clever Closets

If you are finishing your basement and building walls, incorporate a small area to enclose the furnace, AC, and or water heater. These louvered doors provide great ventilation. Another option is to create a set of built-in shelves in the door that don’t even look like a closet. Tuck it away and never have to look at it again.

Incorporate It into the Design

Not all furnaces are neatly tucked into a corner area. Many times, they are smack dab in the middle of your space. Don’t let that deter you from using the space the way you want. Check out these solutions that will have your guests saying, “Furnace? What furnace?”

As you can see, you have many options to choose from. From simple to stylish, we hope one of these ideas inspired you to find a solution to your heater hiding woes.